Web/Tech

January 14, 2007

So yes, I have returned to our home in the country with a cold as a parting gift from London. I just fired up my e-mail software and logged-in after just four days without being able to check most of my accounts. I have nine addresses that I use regularly, one of them pretty much a legacy from many years ago that I can’t fully jettison because I’m still subbed to mailing lists with it and frankly I am too lazy to un-sub and re-sub with a new address. So how many junk mail messages did I return to? Over 500. Yep. Over 100 a day. And you think that’s crazy? Well let me tell you, for the legacy email addresses (that is, ones I no longer use or ones that I intentionally only use when doing on-line transactions – deleting email addresses doesn’t just bounce the mail back to sender; they fire through to the core admin account) the total is nearer 2500. So call it 3000 pieces of junk mail for four days. Do the math.

No surprise then that I recall the comments made at BETT about e-mail being the biggest drain on productivity in business.

So with younger generations of users increasingly favouring IM /SMS technologies to communicate (not to mention conducting conversations via comment spaces on blogs and social networking sites), are we approaching a situation where e-mail is becoming a legacy technology? Will e-mail go the way of Usenet, for example? Has it already? Answers on anything but an email please…

January 12, 2007

By contrast with the morning, the few hours spent at BETT in the afternoon are a come down of sorts. Actually that’s not strictly fair, for one of the seminars is truly inspirational and the kind of thing you wish was being trumpeted from the rooftops. Or was at least given prominence as a Keynote for the whole damn shindig. Actually the two afternoon seminars show two sides of the approaches to ICT these days. In one, ‘What does good ICT look like?’, there are the usual rumblings about the importance of teaching young people about file management and the teaching of ‘skills’ with specific software packages (death by Powerpoint, Word and Excel). There is talk of needing ‘specialist ICT teachers’ to deliver ICT teaching, which seems at odds with the views of some (our own LEA ICT advisor amongst them) who suggest that the best ICT teaching is currently being delivered by non-ICT specialists. There is insistence on discrete ICT teaching and there being allocated time for that in the timetable. All very grey. All very safe and dull.

On the other side of the coin, there is the inspirational presentation by someone from Headworks, who passionately argues the case for students learning best through doing and making rather than consuming; for choice and immediacy; for collaboration and social networking as a learning environment rather than behemoth ‘learning platforms’. It’s a seductive argument, and I suppose I feel strongly about it because I hear him talking about things I’ve been pushing to implement in school for some time. Things like using Flickr and blogs; opening up network access and teaching responsible behaviour rather than trying to ban services or block sites. “Connections not content” was one of his mantras, and it’s a good one. It’s not about the content of the teaching activities on a whiteboard, it’s about the learning connections students make with each other and the wider world. It’s about what they DO and about what they MAKE. I like how this ties neatly into the idea of making connections between things which we have for so long pushed in our Art curriculum. “Powerpoint is not a learning tool” is another mantra, and that’s one I particularly like. The key to successful use of ICT in teaching and learning is not in how we use it to present ‘facts’ to our students, but is rather in how those young people use their technologies to make sense of what they are learning.

Oh, and apologies for anyone looking for pontifications about Pop music. Normal service (whatever the hell that is) will be resumed soon. Ish. Maybe.

After six hours spent wading through the human scrum of the BETT conference floor yesterday, I put my time to better use today and split the day in two. The morning therefore was spent at the Tate Modern, looking through the main galleries for the first time since they were all re-hung. It looks good, and whilst I naturally skimmed through several rooms of over-familiar material, there was nevertheless enough new things to be excited about, or old familiar friends to enthuse anew over. My Moleskine notebook was put into practice for the first time in a while, with some furiously scribbled notes about potential project ideas, or at least new artists or works to use as starting or reference points. What follows is an attempt to make sense of those ideas and to collect them for posterity. Am I more likely to remember to read my blog in six months than I am to look in my notebooks? Who knows. Maybe that’s part of the experiment of life.

So I started off with Mark Tobey’s ‘Northwest Drift’, a lovely piece about local colour and flavour. “Colours which seem indigenous to the locale” as he put it.

Next I went into the Rothko room. Now, I have some glorious memories of this when it was in the Tate Britain. Arguably it worked better there surrounded by the wood panelling, but nevertheless it felt like being back home. I know it’s cliché to say it, but the Rothko room really is a spiritual experience. The paintings force you to empty your mind and to contemplate both the universal vastness and the minutiae of existence. It’s to do with the fields of colour reverberating in the soul (today they seem like the colour of coagulated or dried blood) and the detail of the tonal variances I think. Sitting looking at length at the paintings, I am aware of the banks of colour and tone on the peripheries of vision, and these seem to be as important as the picture in front of me. For some time I have the luxury of being in the room alone. Later, several young people wander in and quickly leave. They don’t get it. Which is fair enough. I’m not sure I do either, although I do know I love it passionately.

Next it’s Tacita Dean. I saw these blackboard drawings ten years ago at the Turner Prize show, and really liked them then. They seem even better now. The sea swell drawing is exquisite. The ‘lost at sea’ video is compelling also, and I sit for longer than I really have time for.

I pass swiftly through the glut of surrealist schtick (brimming with school kids inexplicably drooling over Dali) pausing only to admire ‘The Autobiography of An Embryo’ by Eileen Agar because it looks like it could be a great starting point for a Visual Arts / Science project.

Cindy Sherman is better by far. I have long had a soft spot for Sherman and remember Clare doing some lovely Sherman influence work at EDC many years ago. Looking at the Film Stills afresh, I’m struck by how they might be used as an impetus for creative writing that explores the potential narrative behind the images. Also, working in digital photography and then putting the images back into advertisement or magazine layout forms, thereby making some kind of influential feedback loop. This would be good for the Digital Graphics course, particularly if we then looked at some of Brody’s Face layouts, or the old Ray Gun pages.

Thomas Schutte’s photographs of caricature models are even more inspiring. The opportunities for mixing 3D modelling and photography are enormous. I’m not sure what materials have been used for the models, but students could easily use plasticine or clay.

As with Sherman, I’ve liked Jenny Holzer’s work for a long time too. I’m not sure if I had just forgotten about her ‘Truisims’ piece but it really tickles me today, particularly having seen these LED displays at the BETT show yesterday. We should invest in some for the gallery and other public spaces at school and use them for displaying creative writing made specifically for the media. As well as the boring messages of school life of course…

I’m sure I posted about this before some years ago, but it really is unspeakably spooky looking at Layla Curtis’ UK Maps and seeing Exeter where Troon should geographically be. For those who don’t know, I grew up in Troon (Scotland) and for the past fifteen years have lived in or around Exeter. As I say, it’s spooky.

Its gorgeous to see some Kurt Schwitters collages in the flesh again. They really are exquisite. For some reason I also start thinking about Poem posters too, and that ties in with the Tomato typography work for Underworld which in turns brings me around to Jasper John’s always inspirational ‘0 thru 9’. Text as shape and form. I need to explore these ideas with my Digital Arts students.

There are also some lovely little details I picked up today. Like seeing some photos by High Noon director Fred Zinnemann, most notable amongst which was a 1932 shot of a six day bike racing event at Madison Square Garden (hence the origin of the name of the ‘Madison’ track race for cyclists). Also I didn’t know that the photo source for Richard Hamilton’s ‘Interior II’ was a promotional shot for Shockproof, which I have to say I have never seen.

Best of all though (well, alongside the Rothko room) was seeing Christian Marclay’s extraordinary ‘Video Quartet’ piece from 2002. This is surely the best piece of Video installation work I have ever seen. Maybe it’s because it’s so firmly rooted in filmic reference (Marclay uses clips from a huge range of Hollywood movies as his source material which makes it a gricer’s paradise), or maybe it’s because it makes such fine use of sound and music, but whatever, I wanted to applaud when it had finished. If you have never seen it, then I’d suggest you get along to the Tate Modern pronto.

And finally, passing through one of the rooms, I spot an abandoned backpack and sketchbook sitting on the floor beneath the hanging Robert Morris sculpture. The tension between the sculpture and the objects is palpable. Shortly afterwards a young girl and her friend return to the sketchbook and sit in the same position drawing the blue wall hung Donald Judd. It is a beautiful moment.

December 31, 2006

You may have noticed from the Pie post below that I discovered the Flock browser this morning. I have a million and one things that need doing today, and although I have managed one or two, the majority have gone on the back burner (i.e. I’ll do them this afternoon, or tomorrow, or oh, sometime before I go back to school on Thursday. Maybe.) whilst I’ve been tickling the preferences and generally trying out Flock. So far I am impressed and might be tempted to switch from Safari. It would be super cool as a browser for school as well, as it integrates so well with Flickr. I’m tempted to say that it’s as yummy as pie, but that might just be silly. Okay, remove the word ‘might’ and replace with ‘would’.

December 30, 2006

I made up my first reviews mix of the year today. After being fed up with not having any really great new records to listen to, I actually sat down and listened properly to a bunch, and there are some great moments on there. Particularly enjoyed the Decoration album. More on that when I get around to doing the reviews now doubt.

I also re-arranged the Geek Lair the last couple of days. Just moved a few things around in a desperate attempt to kick myself into a state of more activity. It usually helps. Plus I realised I hadn’t taken any photos for ages, so I took a bunch around the room… See them all on Flickr

Oh, here’s the tracklist for the mix. Expect a zip of the whole mix soontime.